Any college student is familiar with the word \u2018procrastinate.\u2019 I\u2019m not going to pretend my habit of procrastinating and doing projects\/essays\/readings the night or even the morning before they\u2019re due is unique to me, because I know most of my friends have this same issue. But I do get really frustrated with it, and I want to write about it.<\/p>\n
Oddly enough, the biggest problem for me is reading. As an English major, most of my classes involve reading, and somehow that\u2019s harder to get done than most of the assignments in my other classes. In the required natural science, foreign language, and math classes I\u2019ve taken, I\u2019ve had no problem getting the work done; I remember cranking out solutions to equations in high school math. There\u2019s something steady and mechanical about getting math or science homework done, about answering defined questions until there are none left.<\/p>\n
Reading assignments have similar end goals, so it shouldn\u2019t be so hard. When I\u2019m told to read the first 190 pages of Women in Love<\/em> by D.H. Lawrence, it seems easy. But there are a lot of problems. I tend to underestimate how long it\u2019ll actually take to get through the readings while actually paying attention to what\u2019s going on and trying to understand everything (down to particular words I have to look up). And even though I\u2019m a frequent reader, I\u2019m not a fast reader, so that makes it even harder.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s more than just the logical factors. There\u2019s always something that causes me to think \u201cOkay, this is what I\u2019ll get done tonight\u2014I have plenty of time to get it all done,\u201d then blink 12 hours later and realize I read 15 out of the 190 pages. Or sometimes not a single page at all.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like some compulsion, some sick anti-addition to reading, some sort of reader\u2019s block. I can\u2019t tell for sure what it is. Maybe it\u2019s partly dependent on my enjoyment of the reading\u2014two of the few books I actually finished for class this year were The Good Soldier<\/em> by Ford Madox Ford and A Visit from the Goon Squad<\/em> by Jennifer Egan, two books I really loved\u2014but it can\u2019t be just that. Back in high school, whenever people said \u201cI would<\/em> like this book, but the fact that we have<\/em> to read it for class makes me hate reading it,\u201d I completely disagreed; reading The Great Gatsby<\/em> and Of Mice and Men<\/em> in class made me like the books more, because discussing them helped me learn what made them so special. But something has somehow changed a little in college, and I frequently find myself unable to read what I\u2019m required to.<\/p>\n The worst part is that it\u2019s not just being required<\/em> to read, though. I haven\u2019t read many books outside of class, either.<\/p>\n At first I thought that was because I was so busy reading for class that I didn\u2019t want to read more<\/em> when I had time to relax. Again, it is partly that, but that doesn\u2019t account for all of it. I made it a goal for the New Year to read at least one book each month outside of class, but so far, I\u2019ve failed miserably at that resolution. Reading increasingly just has this feeling to me of something that I have to prepare myself to do, something that requires an insanely focused amount of attention that I simply lack. I\u2019m always thinking, always preferring to either cathartically release my stress-inducing thoughts by journaling or just kick back and watch TV or a movie, something that doesn\u2019t require even the typing of keys or the willpower to keep going, because it plays on its own.<\/p>\n I could fix this if I made a conscious effort to just stop watching TV and movies for a while, even a couple weeks. I mean, after all, I still consider books my favorite medium of story. They directly place you in characters\u2019 point of views in a way that most movies and TV simply can\u2019t. I much prefer writing in a novelistic form over writing in screenplay format. And, as large as my movie and TV to-watch lists are, my list of books to read is far longer.<\/p>\n Yet I don\u2019t want to forgo TV (the main medium that takes up my time\u2014far more than movies), because it has something that books doesn\u2019t to the same degree: timeliness. When a new episode of \u201cGirls\u201d airs, I want to watch it immediately so that I can read reviews, talk with people about it online, and generally just take part in the cultural conversation. I like staying timely with TV; at the bottom of my planner, below my daily homework obligations, I have a list of episodes from the week that I plan on catching up with as time allows. There\u2019s a sense that I have to catch up on these various shows as soon as possible, especially when we\u2019re in this period of \u2018peak TV.\u2019 There\u2019s less motivation with reading\u2014especially when so many of my friends are TV and movie enthusiasts.<\/p>\n Still, it feels wrong to be in this sad state of reader\u2019s block, especially as an English major. It feels like I\u2019m violating my identity knowing that right now, at this moment in time, I\u2019d rather watch the newest episode of \u201cJane the Virgin\u201d than read any of the books I\u2019ve wanted to read. Hopefully, once summer rolls around, I\u2019ll have more time to consume all kinds of stories\u2014not just the ones that take the least effort to begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any college student is familiar with the word \u2018procrastinate.\u2019 I\u2019m not going to pretend my habit of procrastinating and doing projects\/essays\/readings the night or even the morning before they\u2019re due is unique to me, because I know most of my friends have this same issue. But I do get really frustrated with it, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7504,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7502\/revisions\/7504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}